


The Anniversary

by papergardener



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Imector, Romance, father-daughter bonding, valentines day gift exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:40:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22724818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papergardener/pseuds/papergardener
Summary: Héctor needs some help figuring out how to make this anniversary special. It's been a while, after all.
Relationships: Héctor Rivera/Imelda Rivera
Comments: 14
Kudos: 63





	The Anniversary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [demonoflight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonoflight/gifts).



“Your anniversary? How wonderful!” Coco said, clasping her hands together.

“Yes, yes, but you must keep this a secret,” whispered Héctor, lightly touching daughter’s shoulder as they made their way through the winding cobblestone streets. The evening shadows were growing long, and the great buildings that jutted up on all sides were already glowing with lights.

Héctor had asked her if she would like to go for a walk with him, and see more of the Land of the Dead. It was true, certainly, but far from the real heart of the matter that he desperately needed her help with.

“A secret?” Coco asked, puzzled. “Don’t you think _Mamá_ would know her own anniversary?”

“I, uh, hmmm…” Héctor squinted upwards in thought, unaware that his daughter was unconsciously mimicking him, tilting her head and squinting as well. Both suspected that Imelda very possibly did not remember the date of their anniversary. Very likely, in fact, that it was one of many things she had striven to forget for all those centuries.

“She might remember, true…” Héctor said, willing to give Imelda the benefit of a doubt. Then he shook his head. “But that’s beside the point! I need you to keep this a secret between us, all right, _mija_?”

She laughed. “All right, promise.”

“Good, good. So… what should I do? I’d like to do something special for her, especially since this will be the first one after so many years. I want it to be meaningful,” he said desperately.

Coco reached out and softly tapped his hand. “I would be happy to help, then.”

“Good, because I hardly know where to start. I don’t think she’d want something big and showy,” Héctor mused. “It was never her thing, if I remember. Honestly, it wasn’t much my thing ever.”  
  


“No, I don’t think she would appreciate it,” Coco agreed. “I’m mean, I’m sure she would appreciate anything you would do—“

“No, no, let’s skip all that. Keep it honest.” They paused at an intersection, as a great snail-like alibrije passed, twice the size of a car and many times as slow as one. “All right, so, my other idea was to take her to a fancy restaurant for dinner. There’s a French place, if you’d believe it. Back from the Porfiristo age, but the food is pretty good. Very good, actually.”

“Really? When would you have ever been there?”

“Ohhhh, that is another story,” Héctor said, his voice climbing higher as he gave a long shrug. “One of my, er, adventures, back in the day. Let’s not worry about that. But… what do you think?”

Coco considered, looking up into the sky and humming, even as they started walking again. “She may like it… but then again, maybe not. I remember that sometimes men—customers, wholesalers, patrons from the church—would take her to dinner in town, but she never seemed to enjoy them. She said they were more stressful than they were worth.”

“Ah, well that’s good to know,” he said, frowning slightly.

As they passed under one home, music came pouring down from a radio. Héctor looked up. He didn’t recognize the song—must be something new and modern.

“Back in our day, we would hire mariachi bands serenade girls we fancied,” Héctor said, making Coco laugh.

“They still do! You sometimes hear them down the road. Ahh, Julio tried that.” She smiled wide. “Once.”

“Let me guess,” Héctor said, smiling wide as well. “It didn’t go well.”

“ _Mamá_ almost didn’t let me marry him after that,” she said with a cheery laugh. “I don’t know what he was thinking. Ah, no, that’s not true. He told me afterwards that he meant it as a show of bravery. It was very foolish of him… but I also found it very brave, too.”

“Apparently it worked.”

“He tried so hard to court me,” she said, her eyes tightening at the corners, she was smiling so much. “I told him he should go after other girls, more suitable, easier girls, but he refused, said there was only one woman in the world for him.”

“He’s a good man, Julio,” Héctor said, meaning every word of it. He had liked Julio even before, when he was re-meeting his family, but he liked him a great deal more when he saw how well he and Coco loved each other.

“Ah, sorry,” Coco said, waving her hand and looking at it intently once more. “Your anniversary…”

“Right, yes. It’s coming up soon, and I haven’t thought of anything. I thought I might write her a song, but that’s not happening. Not this year, anyway.” Perhaps next year, he thought. Perhaps next year, the words and melody might actually come to him and he wouldn’t be so tightly wound about it.

He sighed. “We have music again, but maybe this isn’t the time for it. No new song, no big show, no mariachi band. Right?”  
  


“Right.”

“What about flowers?” Héctor said suddenly.

“Oh, she would love flowers!”

“Good! Okay, so… what kind?”

They walked past them in stores and on windowsills, seeming to sprout up everywhere with the coming spring.

Paper flowers.

There were paper dahlias and paper marigolds made of stiff tissue paper, in every shade they grew plus many colors they didn’t. But even Hector knew that wouldn’t be enough. They were pretty, though. Perhaps he could get some as decoration for around the house, a bit of brightness.

They stopped by a street vendor along the way, with wrapped bouquets of paper flowers in tall white buckets for show, and wonderful little triangular stacks of paper dahlias in orange and purple and red.

There were also calla lilies to consider. They were not so popular in his lifetime, but another—much more famous Rivera—had made them iconic since then, and even though there were no tourists in the Land of the Dead to buy them, they were still widely seen.

“It can’t be paper flowers,” he said, after they both spent several minutes browsing.

“Real flowers are so expensive, though,” Coco said with a frown. A dozen roses was costly enough in the Land of the Living. In the Land of the Dead, they could cost an arm and a leg. Or perhaps a hand and foot. Or a tooth.

Héctor tapped his golden tooth with his thumb, pondering on that.

“Well, a few paper flowers shouldn’t go amiss.”

They carried on. Soon they would need to return home for dinner, and they still needed an idea.

“What about jewelry?” was his next one.

“ _Mamá_ does like jewelry,” Coco admitted. “Although she only really wears them for special occasions, not every day in the workshop.”

“But maybe… something…” Except jewelry was trickier in the Land of the Dead. Bracelets could snag in the bones of the wrist. Necklaces could get lost or tangled in the spindly ends of collarbones. Earrings were just weird, even if Imelda did wear them. Somehow.

“Rings…” he eventually muttered, staring at the back of his hand, his bony fingers outstretched.

“Hmm…” Coco said, doing the same, both walking with their heads bowed, hands outstretched.

Then they both stopped. Her eyes met his, and as one they came to the same realization.

_“Oh!”_

* * *

“Good morning, _mi amor!_ ”

She pulled a hand over her face before sitting up and looking from his beaming face to the window whose curtains had been pulled wide not ten second earlier.

“The shop—“

“Victoria is managing the shop, _Mamá_ ,” Coco said sweetly. “And Rosita is at the counter. We told them not to bother you.”

“At least for a few hours,” Héctor added.

“Come outside,” Héctor said, rather suspiciously, as he held her robe up so she could slip her arms in before pulling it close and tying it at the waist.

Imelda glanced at the sliding door to outside, the curtains thrown open wide, the filtered morning sun pouring in and catching the dust in the air. She allowed herself to be lead over, pausing as Héctor slid the door open with a grand flourish.

“Surprise!” Coco said cheerfully, spreading her hands wide, smiling even wider.

Imelda said not a word as she stepped forward onto their little balcony, very basic, with a wood and metalwork railing overlooking a very great height, and against the wall a simple bench, big enough for two. Simple. Clean. Not even a flowerpot as an accent.

At least, that was how it was normally.

That morning it fairly shone with color, with gay garlands of paper dahlias draped overhead, laced through the metalwork rail, and now, there, a flowerpot full of paper calla lilies.

“Happy anniversary, Imelda.”

She spun quickly, staring up at Héctor, could feel how she must look—wide eyed and mouth hanging open.

It was their anniversary?

“Oh. Ah, H-Héctor…” she said softly. She meant to apologize. It wasn’t fair, she thought—not for the first time—that he did held onto these memories and moments from their life together, and she didn’t.

“I hope you like it,” Héctor said, before she could let out another word and possibly ruin the moment altogether. He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.

She nodded, smiling and blinking quite a bit, surely from the bright morning light. Now she looked more closely, not only at the décor, but what lay on the little spindly table. It couldn’t even be seen anymore, covered with a large wooden tray bearing food and drink.

There was a basket with fresh pan dulce, of course, and a bowl of strawberries and fresh cut mango, and there were steaming sausages and cooked eggs with fried onion and cilantro and newly baked tortillas.

“What is all this?” she asked, looking up and turning from one beaming face to another.

Really, it was absurd for how different they were—short and tall, broad and skinny, young and old—Héctor and Coco shared so much in common, including their smile.

And, apparently, a love of kind mischief.

“We were thinking of breakfast in bed,” Héctor began.

“But then we realized you might not like getting the sheets dirty,” Coco said, to which Imelda nodded.

“So we thought we’d have breakfast out here!” Héctor said, waving one hand wide, as if presenting the world itself.

They both paused, waiting and watching intensely for her reaction.

“It’s wonderful,” she said, after some moments to get her thoughts sorted. “Thank you, both of you.”

Imelda reached out and lay a hand on her daughter’s shoulder, saying more than words. They had become closer, as mother and daughter, in their shared afterlife. Slowly, with help from their family, they set aside the things that had once driven them apart in ways.

Coco looked from one to the other, and shuffled nearer the door. “I should go help in the shop—“

“Oh, no, no!” Héctor cried, blocking her path and physically turning her about, pointing at the extra chair against the side. “You’re staying. Right, Imelda?”  
  


“Of course you are,” she said, sounding much more like herself as she took a seat on the bench. “I couldn’t ask for better company.”

“Thank you both. Really,” she said. And she looked to her husband, his eyes warm and catching the light.

“Wait, wait there’s one more surprise,” he said, pulling a small box from his pocket, and a hundred emotions seemed to swirl within her when she saw the small ring inside.

They had not even worn rings when they first married. Now, on their anniversary, so many years later…

“Héctor…” she managed to breathe.

“They’re not the best,” Héctor said, pulling out one for himself. “They’re not silver or gold. But give me time.”

“Well,” she said slowly, after recovering her voice. Reaching out, she lay a hand over his, and gripped it tight. “Well, good thing we have a great deal of time left together.”


End file.
